We begin with watersweeper.com. If you think it’s simply too difficult sweep the dust off your sidewalk with an ordinary broom and pick up trash by hand, you can purchase this sprinkler-on-wheels for only $179. It’s sold as a “quick & easy” way to clean pavement and “blasts away dirt, … litter, [and] pop cans” using a constant flow of pressurized water. Since it only uses 8 gallons of water per minute, “it saves you money”. The idea to waste water on cleaning sidewalk comes to you not from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” but  from the dry desert state of Utah, where it costs $1.00 to use this device to spray water for 21 hours (10,080 gallons).

At least there’s not a  world water crisis going on, and good thing they didn’t make a documentary film called FLOW discussing the world water crisis.

While the theory that fewer parking spaces make people more inclined to walk or use other forms of transportation may sound good, eradicating parking does not actually accomplish this. There are still just as many or more cars today than there were yesterday, so there is just as much or need for parking. If people have been ingenious enough to create parking spaces from the unused space in the planter strip — keeping their cars off the road and leaving more land available for other purposes — it follows that the city should be singing their praises. It doesn’t follow that “if everybody pays, everybody wins”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I have a different definition of “winning”.

The Defense Department mistakenly shipped secret nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan more than 18 months ago and did not learn that the items were missing until late last week [...]

Officials with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan’s fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters. [...] It was unclear yesterday how the two very different items were mixed up at a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

Utah for the win! Seriously, how do you mix up batteries and nuclear weapon parts? One has dimensions comparable to a breadbox and the other is the size of my under-counter refrigerator. Come on, people!

SAFE COMMUNITIES
Utah Republicans: Leadership that Delivers (… in bed)

What is this, communist China? I don’t think it’s appropriate to find this message inside of a fortune cookie anywhere, let alone one on campus. We can’t even enjoy our food in peace anymore. Politics have gone so far as to invade even our desserts! Is there nowhere safe from their unrelenting, tireless grip?